CONFIRMATION: Congratulations to all our students who
received the Sacrament of Confirmation this weekend. Your parents and sponsors
should be very proud of you all. We welcome all your family members and friends
to our parish to celebrate this wonderful Sacrament with you! I am indebted
to our Confirmation Coordinator, Marie Jansa and our teachers, Jennifer
Vandecouvering, Jennifer Marcantonio, Grace
Manicone and Deb Totino. Your dedication to our Confirmandi has been
very much appreciated. I might add too, that it has been said by all our
teachers, myself included, that our grade seven students have been a real
pleasure to teach! Congrats to you all. Please let me know if any of you would
like to join our ministries now that you are confirmed. You are all welcome.
GARDENING: Many thanks to our Knights of Columbus and
their wives and children, Catherine Mowatt and her family and 10 students from
St. Paul Catholic Secondary School for re-furbishing all the gardens on the
church property. They all look amazing. My planter boxes on the rectory deck
are blooming too! Thanks also, for rebuilding the veggie garden in the rectory
backyard. I really appreciate all of your hard work last weekend.
PENTECOST
SUNDAY
Basil the Great, an early church father,
explains the role of the Holy Spirit in our lives:
"The Spirit restores paradise to us
and the way to heaven and adoption as children of God; he instills confidence
that we may call God truly Father and grants us the grace of Christ to be
children of the light and to enjoy eternal glory. In a word, he bestows the
fullness of blessings in this world and the next; for we may contemplate now in
the mirror of faith the promised things we shall someday enjoy. If this is the foretaste, what must the
reality be? If these are the first fruits, what must be the harvest?"
(From the treatise by Basil on The Holy Spirit)
The Lord Jesus offers each one of us the
gift and power of his Holy Spirit. He wants to make our faith strong, give us
hope that endures, and a love that never grows cold. He never refuses to give
his Spirit to those who ask with expectant faith. Jesus instructed his
disciples to ask confidently for the gift of the Spirit: "If you then, who
are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the
heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!" (Luke
11:13). Do we thirst for God and for the
abundant life he offers through the gift of his Spirit?
Fr. Phil
